How to Find Your Passion

Imagine waking up every morning with the biggest smile on your face and an eagerness to get to work.

Imagine the first thing coming out of your mouth to be: “Woohoo. Bring it on, World!” Imagine actually looking forward to work pressures and deadlines, when they don’t get you down, but get you excited. Yes, that’s how it feels when you discover your true passion. If you haven’t found your passion yet, do it. You will be so much happier and content. Here’s how to go about it:

You must love something

What is it that you love doing the most? What is it that gets your motors running? Gardening, singing, teaching, selling, writing? What is it that you lean towards the most? Do you want to open your own restaurant or a coffee shop? Do you like to build things? Do like carpentry, meeting and talking to people, reading books? What gets you excited? What do you dream about most at night? If someone tells you, “Hey, Tom, we’re heading to a writing workshop,” will you bolt to your friend’s home before he replaces the phone, or disconnect your phone so that he won’t call you again? Get a piece of paper and pen, or head to your laptop or PC and start typing. Make a list of your skills and talent and find out which comes closest to making you smile. If the list doesn’t help, ask your friends and family to help you identify things they think you’re good at. Or you can always take an aptitude test to figure out where your strengths lie.

Where do you invest most of your time?

I knew I wanted to be a writer long back, when I was still in school. But it took a more solid form once I completed my studies. When I decided that I wanted to write professionally, all I did for hours and hours together was to browse for universities that offered a Masters program in writing. Monitor where you spend your time. Which websites do you surf the most on the internet? When you go to a bookstore, which section do you rush to? If you’re in the midst of a discussion, which topic gets you jumping up and down, like a child going to Disneyland. Film making? Acting? Directing? Scriptwriting? Stand up comedy?

Trial run

There you have it – your passion. But hey, don’t go bonkers over it yet. Do not hand in your resignation right away. There’s a lot of work still to be done. Give your hobby or passion a trial run. See how it goes. Have it going on the side. See whether you truly are passionate about it. See this as a training ground, a sort of skill building phase, if you will. Continue to research on how you can become the best in your field, how you can introduce things that have never been taught before, whether you need to upgrade yourself through a course or a workshop. And continue to practise. Get real good at it before thinking of turning it into your full time profession.

Roadblocks

It might be possible that you don’t find your passion immediately. You might have thought this is it and then found yourself getting bored within a week. Don’t worry. You can still pick one thing at a time and put it into practise. Once you start discarding the ones that don’t excite you, you will soon be left with things that do. But the key is to not stop trying. Ever. Keep at it. You never know, but you might have multiple passions in life. So give yourself time to explore all of them. Even if you’re not making money off it as yet, don’t quit. Success takes time, but when it comes, it comes at the speed of a torrent.

Put everything into finding your passion, because once you do, there will be no looking back. The glow on your face will never leave. You will feel so much more content and fulfilled, as though you’re serving your life’s purpose. So keep looking.